Relapse and Memories
by Six Times Nine
Summary: It has been years since the Evil League of Evil and the Council of Champions battled across the landscape of Los Angeles. Now they resurface in New York City, and Barney finds himself acting strange... After Act 3 and during Season 6. My first fic, ever.
1. Prologue

**I don't own Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog or How I Met Your Mother, etc, etc, other disclaimer stuff.**

The Evil League of Evil was falling apart after six months of Doctor Horrible's villainy. The Council of Champions was inches away from winning the battle raging across Los Angeles, and evildoers were fleeing the city. It had not taken long for Doctor Horrible to conclude he would have to retreat to survive.

But where?

New York, said a small voice in his head. He had always wanted to go there, but he would need a secret identity, a foolproof way of staying alive and evading capture.

The name he had taken was the one his cab driver had misheard when he introduced himself. He had taken a month to design a new life, a new home, a new personality, a fake family. He had dropped memory pills in secret into the drinks of his false mother, brother, ex-girlfriend, everyone he might need to pretend was once a part of his life. He had made a fake tape of a hippie version of himself proclaiming his passion for his then-true love. He bought a multitude of toys and forged photos that would be his alleged childhood. He purchased suits for the everyday wear of his new persona, the refined Casanova that would craft the most outrageous and exquisite lies to sleep with a woman. He had invaded the offices of an Altrucell building and created his own apparent workplace, where he would know all the men there and yet need no job. All the money he would ever need was that which he had stolen in his six months in L.A., and if he needed more, he would temporarily awaken from his fog of memory that kept him from knowing his job and steal more. Any time he needed information on anything his past self would have known, he would retrieve that single fact from the depths of his memory. If he ever needed to be Doctor Horrible again, his fabricated facade would break. That was the way his memory pill was designed, the one that had taken him many sleepless nights to create. Finally, he had swallowed it.

He was Barney.

A week from then, he had met a man named Ted at a nearby bar and begun to teach him how to live.


	2. Chapter One

It was a typical day at the offices of Goliath National Bank. Some of the employees were hard at work, caffeine-deprived and next to asleep as they rushed to complete business assignments on time. Some were hosting beer pong tournaments within meeting rooms, rebelling in secret against any work they would otherwise be required to do. Some, such as Barney, were at their computers, staring and laughing at clips of the strangest happenings play and replay as they slacked off, distracted.

That is, until the horse came in.

Barney was on his way to Marshall's office to show him the 'best video ever' when a stallion had trotted through an adjacent hallway. It had stopped in front of him and stared into his eyes, giving him an intelligent, malevolent look that made it clear this was no ordinary animal. Barney felt his gut wrench and a wave of emotions had crashed over him: fear, respect… and the strangest sense of déjà vu.

It was not until after the horse, along with a parade of equally menacing costumed men and women, had left that Barney had realized exactly why he had felt the way he did when the beast looked at him.

It was Bad Horse.

The Evil League of Evil was within his building.

Four minutes, thirty-nine seconds. That was how long it had taken for both Barney and Marshall to scramble onto the roof of the Goliath National Bank building for a conference call, one that Barney said was 'really, _really_ important'.

Just as Marshall had rushed through the door, weary from work and running up flights of stairs, Barney had swept forward, latched onto his shoulders and shook him in a single fluid movement, and said to his friend with an unsteady voice, "Bad Horse is in our building."

Marshall was just as shocked as Barney was when he had heard the news. "The thoroughbred of sin?" he managed to ask through his fear.

"Yes," Barney said. He had swallowed most of his fear, and was speaking in a calm tone not quite suited to the situation at hand. "And the leaders of the Evil League of Evil."

Marshall was in even more of a panic. He gulped. "The leaders of the ELE? Professor Normal?"

"Yes." Barney said in a matter-of-fact tone, dead calm.

"Tie-Die?"

"Yes."

"Dead Bowie?"

"Yes."

"Fury Leika?"

"Yes."

"Fake Thomas Jefferson?"

"Yes."

"Snakebite?"

"Yes."

"Doctor Horrible?"

"Ye- actually, I don't think I saw him. Weird." Barney's tone became less calm, but it was next to unnoticeable.

There was a short pause, and Marshall spoke. "This is bad. This is bad. The ELE is in our building. What do you think they're gonna do?"

"Relax, Big Chief. Everything's gonna be fine." Under his breath, Barney added "Probably."

Robin hated her job. The horrible puns, her obnoxious cohost Becky, the ungodly hours she got up at to work, the unimportant so-called 'news' her show reported. At least today there would be something somewhat interesting to report: a crime.

She never paid any attention to the stories she reported, simply read her words aloud as her gaze flitted around the studio and her mind wandered. She had returned to reality for small parts of her dialogue, when she drew a blank on what she was thinking about before. This time, she had noticed something odd about the article… it said something about a horse. Wasn't it supposed to be on a murder in an apartment in Brooklyn?

She realized that it was the horse that had killed the people of the apartment and anyone foolish enough to try to stop it, and eventually being 'foiled' (those were the article's exact words) by someone named Captain Hammer. Robin immediately made a mental note to tell all her friends about it as soon as she could, to see what they thought of the seemingly absurd story.

**Author's Notes:**

**Yeah, I have no idea how to do scene dividers. I'm sorry.**

**I'm going to say that in this story's 'verse, Bad Horse thought Doctor Horrible was promising sometime during the six months of villiany and appointed him to leader. And the red labcoat is reserved for special occasions.**  
**And I'm probably getting some details wrong about Robin's job.**


End file.
